WND's AAPS-Linked Doctor Irresponsibly Fearmongers About Ebola
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Fearmongering about filthy, disease-ridden immigrants is what has endeared Elizabeth Lee Vliet to WorldNetDaily. And as befits a WND writer and someone affiliated with the ffar-right-ringe Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, facts just don't seem to matter to her.

In her Aug. 3 WND column, Vliet latches on to the Ebola scare:

Deadly Ebola hemorrhagic fever is raging out of control in multiple countries in West Africa. Border Patrol agents confirmed that West Africans have been apprehended coming via Mexico into the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, with a number of seriously ill individuals whisked away to undisclosed locations for treatment of undisclosed illnesses. ABC News reported in mid-July that seriously ill illegals were flown from Texas to Ventura Naval base recently with high fever, respiratory difficulties, and coughing blood. At least three required ICU admission. No information was released on what illness was diagnosed, but the time course, severity of symptoms, and need for immediate ICU treatment is not typical for tuberculosis and more consistent with Ebola or hemorrhagic forms of dengue fever.

But the WND article to which Vliet links as evidence says nothing  about seriously ill West Africans crossing the southern border and being "whisked away to undisclosed locations for treatment of undisclosed illnesses."

Vliet gets more unhinged and conspiratorial as her column goes on:

Ebola’s use as a weapon of terror and mass destruction has been documented by GlobalSecurity.org, which reports that the former Soviet Union biological weapons program had weaponized the Ebola virus, and that Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese terror group, recently sent members to Africa to harvest the virus during an outbreak.

After long neglecting the contagious disease issues that arose in early June, on July 31, ABC, NBC, CBS and other news outlets simultaneously reported the arrival of two Ebola patients from Africa. Does this give “plausible deniability” to the possible role of illegal border-crossers in bringing Ebola to the U.S.?

In fact, the GlobalSecurity.org article she cites are only speculation and unverified reports (emphasis added):

Reports suggested that the Ebola virus was researched and weaponized by the former Soviet Union's biological weapons program Biopreparat. Dr. Ken Alibek, former the First Deputy Director of Biopreparat, speculated that the Russians had aerosolized the Ebola virus for dissemination as a biological weapon. The Japanese terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo reportedly sent members to Zaire during an outbreak to harvest the virus.

Given that this article is undated, Vliet has no basis to claim any of these purported incidents happened "recently."

Meanwhile, PolitiFact points out just how remote the possibility of Ebola-infected immigrants from West Africa being smuggled across the southern border is, citing actual experts in doing so:

"The incubation period is two to 21 days, so theoretically, an African could fly from an infected area, land in a Mexican airport, take a bus toward the border, hire a coyote to take him across and then ‘present’ with Ebola," said Thomas Fekete, section chief for infectious diseases at the Temple University School of Medicine. "But this presupposes a suicidal person who also has the resources for this kind of travel."

Indeed, the prior, scattered examples of exotic and deadly diseases reaching the United States suggest that "the likelihood of an illegal migrant getting infected and introducing the disease to the U.S. is probably less than that of a ‘legal’ traveler," said Daniel G. Bausch, head of the virology and emerging infections department at the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit No.6 in Lima, Peru.

Another problem: If you had such an infection, the chances are good that you would die on the journey to the United States, said Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Center. "You would be too sick to make it to the border by foot," he said.

But Vliet isn't done:

Not very contagious? Really? Then why do World Health Organization officials say the “worst on record” Ebola outbreak in three countries in West Africa is spreading out of control? Why all the special hazmat suits for doctors and nurses? Why did two doctors die treating Ebola patients? Why all the special and expensive isolation units for Ebola patients? In sharp contrast to WHO, U.S. Centers for Disease Control, or CDC, and government spokespersons seem to be going out of their way to downplay risks to Americans.

That's because the risks are, in fact, miniscule. Numerous experts agree that there is little threat of an Ebola outbreak in the U.S. because the U.S. health infrastructure is much more robust than it is in West Africa. And since Ebola is not transmitted through the air but, rather, by direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, it is indeed "not very contagious."

By spreading lies and conspiracy theories, Vliet is acting in an irresponsible manner with her Ebola fearmongering.

Newsmax Whitewashes Kansas Economy To Save Brownback
Topic: Newsmax

John Gizzi devotes his Aug. 1 Newsmax column to putting the best face he can on the economy in Kansas in order to boost Republican Gov. Sam Brownback's flagging re-election prospects:

In one of the most improbable poll results to emerge from any state this year, a SurveyUSA poll two weeks ago showed Kansas Republican Gov. Sam Brownback trailing Democratic opponent Paul Davis by a margin of 48 percent to 40 percent among likely voters statewide.

"Improbable" is the adjective most frequently used to characterize these results because it accurately reflects the idea that any Republican governor, especially a national conservative hero for his no-tax, small government agenda, could be trailing a Democrat in Kansas. In the last 76 years, the Sunflower State has elected only five Democratic governors.

So why is Brownback, a former two-term U.S. senator who captured the governorship in 2010 with 63 percent of the vote, in political hot water this year?

To pundits, Brownback is the underdog against state House Minority Leader Davis because the governor has pursued a decidedly conservative agenda. With Brownback in charge as the state faces a $300 million revenue shortfall, The Washington Post concluded "he may be paying a political price."

Brownback supporters say his agenda is working, but like the tax and spending cuts Ronald Reagan helped put into law in 1981, its positive results may not occur immediately.

[...]

With Republicans in firm control of both houses of the legislature, Brownback successfully guided to law major cuts in the state income tax rate (from 6.4 percent to 4.8 percent) with the eventual goal of abolishing the state income tax. While it is true that Kansas faces a major shortfall, it also has unemployment of only 4.9 percent — "the tenth lowest in the nation," Brownback proudly says — and has witnessed a growth in technical education.

Actually, the economy in Kansas under Brownback is in much worse shape that Gizzi will admit.

The Kansas City Star points out that the job growth rate in Kansas has been anemic, and that in fact the state has recently lost jobs, led by thousands of local and state government jobs that were cut:

Kansas has had one of the nation’s poorest rates of employment growth during Brownback’s time in office, including since the first tax cuts took effect in 2013.

The new Bureau of Labor Statistics report also reveals that Kansas — like eight other states — had fewer jobs at the end of June than it did seven months ago. This fact undermines the Brownback mantra that the state’s economy is gaining steam in 2014.

[...]

By the way, several other states also have trimmed local and state government employment, yet still surged ahead of Kansas in private sector jobs. For good measure, the number of government and private sector jobs have grown in states like Colorado, Oklahoma and Iowa.

Meanwhile, Forbes describes how Brownback bought into right-wing ideology that tax cuts pay for themselves, the folly of which is demonstrated by the state's current revenue shortfall:

The business boom predicted by tax cut advocates has not happened, and it certainly has not come remotely close to offsetting the static revenue loss from the legislated tax cuts.

One can argue whether cutting taxes is a good thing. One can argue about whether government is too big. One can even argue about whether low taxes increase business activity. But one cannot credibly argue that tax cuts increase revenue or even pay for themselves. They didn’t for Ronald Reagan. They don’t for Sam Brownback. They won’t for the next politician who tries—whether he (or she) is in Washington, D.C. or in some state capital.

Nevertheless, Gizzi concludes his column in full Brownback rah-rah mode: "If Sam Brownback, who has already made history of sorts with a bold and controversial agenda, next makes history by winning re-election, it will be one of the defining political moments of 2014."

WND's Unruh Turns In Another Press Release For A Right-Wing Legal Group
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh turns his stenography skills to another right-wing organization in an Aug. 1 article:

A team of attorneys is jumping to the defense of a scientist who was fired after making the stunning discovery of soft tissue attached to a triceratops skeleton, undermining the belief that dinosaurs roamed earth no less than 60 million years ago.

The Pacific Justice Institute said its case on behalf of Mark Armitage alleges a university official where Mark Armitage worked shouted at him, “We are not going to tolerate your religion in this department!”

The suit against California State University Northridge, filed recently in Los Angeles County Superior Court against the board of trustees, alleges discrimination.

“Terminating an employee because of their religious views is completely inappropriate and illegal,” said Brad Dacus, PJI president.

Unruh is so invested in advocating for PJI that not only can't he be bothered to obtain any response to the lawsuit from the university, the headline of Unruh's article is surprisingly close to the headline on PJI's press release on the lawsuit.

WND:

PJI:

Unruh also obscures facts to make PJI and its client look good. He suggests that Armitage's dinosaur research was done under the auspices of the university that employed him; in fact, Armitage was doing his dinosaur research outside of the school with other creationists, and he was employed by the university only as a part-time microscope technician.

Unruh also suggests that Armitage's publication of his "stunning discovery of soft tissue attached to a triceratops skeleton" was directly linked to his alleged firing. But as the blog io9 points out, Armitage apparently went beyond his job description by discussing his young-earth creationism with students:

This description of events sounds like Mr. Armitage informed some students of his young-earth creationist beliefs, and this might be where Dr. Kwok, his new supervisor, found out about them as well. Unmentioned by the lawsuit, students (undergrad? grad?) in biology departments are not big fans of hearing about young-earth creationism, so at least one of these students might have thought Mr. Armitage was proselytizing to them, even if he didn't intend to.

[...]

It sounds like Mr. Armitage said something not-very-scientific towards students and may or may not have told them that dinosaur fossils are thousands of years old. Maybe Mr. Armitage shouldn't have done that.

Further, as io9 commenters went on to note, Armitage's paper on his dinosaur research is suspect because it lacks information about where his research was conducted or any acknowledgments for research assistance. This raises the possibility that Armitage may have been using the microscope lab he worked at to conduct his research, perhaps without permission.

It seems there's much more to this story than Unruh would have you think. Too bad Unruh is completely uninterested in reporting it.

CNS Unemployment Numbers Distortion Watch
Topic: CNSNews.com

It's a new month, which means it's time once again for CNSNews.com to find ways to avoid reporting good news about the economy.

In July, 209,000 jobs were added, but that's not what you read at CNS. Instead, CNS played another round of talking down the economy:

Number of Unemployed Women Increased in July by 227,000

11,472,000 Americans Have Left Workforce Since Obama Took Office

Neither article mentions that 227,000 jobs were created. That last article, by Ali Meyer, fails to mention one significant factor in the dropping labor participation rate: baby boomers are retiring.

WND's Zahn Tries To Impose Christianity On Pre-Christian 'Hercules'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

See if you can follow this chain of thought from Drew Zahn's WorldNetDaily review of the new "Hercules" film:

The film follows the adventures of the ancient Greek hero Hercules after he’s completed his legendary 12 labors, with the clever twist that he’s not really the son of Zeus, as Greek mythology would teach, but only a hardened warrior who has gotten by with the help of his friends. The stories of his conquests, however, grew to mythical proportions (with a bit of help), until people believed him the “son of a god.”

Each “magical” event and “monster” in his life is revealed by the film to be a perfectly natural occurrence only inflated to its supernatural reputation by a bit of trickery and the help of the grapevine.

And so long as we’re talking only about the mythical Hercules, this naturalist explanation for an ancient, supernatural hero is not a problem. Discerning audiences could enjoy the action and imagery and celebrate the movie’s messages about heroism, integrity and the measure of a man.

But if, by chance, this thread theme of the movie – that ancient heroes were not really supernatural, but at best overblown legends and, at worst, frauds – were to apply to Jesus Christ … why, then we’d have a different message to the movie after all.

And that’s where I found the half of a worm.

No, Jesus is never mentioned by name in the movie, nor are any direct parallels made. There’s a companion who betrays Hercules, the son of a god father and human mother, for money – but it’s still clear we’re talking about Hercules, not Jesus and his betrayer, Judas.

Yet the final line of the film feels way too much like finding the head of the thread was a snake all along.

“The world needs a hero they can believe in,” explains Hercules’ companion Amphiaraus. “Is he actually the son of Zeus? It doesn’t really matter.”

Then the final credits roll, with the song singing, “Ain’t no God on these streets, in the heart of the jungle. Won’t you follow me into the jungle?”

For me, the moment just felt a step too far.

I can’t say the filmmakers meant the movie in any way as a reference to Christ – “Hercules” does nothing to really justify that conclusion. But I do think audiences, especially undiscerning audiences culture-wide, will all too easily find their minds greased to swallow the humanistic idea that Jesus was a heroic figure, a good teacher, even if he wasn’t really divine. They just watched, after all, how all magic and monsters and miracles aren’t really real, but legends that grew into supernatural malarkey over the passage of time. If it was true of Hercules …

“The world needs a hero they can believe in. Is he actually the son of [God]? It doesn’t really matter.”

Doesn’t matter? Doesn’t matter! It’s all that matters!

As we read it, Zahn is concerned that a Greek myth might be extrapolated to apply to Christianity, despite the fact that there is no mention of Christianity in the film.Which makes sense, since the time of Greek mythology predates Christianity.

Indeed, Zahn writes later: "The movie is set in a time of superstition, and there’s stories told of the Greek gods, but no actual gods appear, nor is religion prominently displayed. In fact, the point of the movie is that the superstition is all false anyway."

But doesn't the arrival of Christianity implicitly hold that the Greek mythology it superceded was all superstition and, thus, false?

It seems that Zahn is trying to impose his version of Christianity on a pre-Christian narrative. But imposing his own agenda instead of reviewing movies for what they are is what Zahn is all about.

Tim Graham's Imaginary J-School
Topic: Media Research Center

Tim Graham is the director of media analysis at the Media Research Center. Here's some of that "media analysis," as described in a July 28 Newsmax article:

Journalists are trained to distrust the United States, and that distrust has trickled down to Israel, says Tim Graham, executive editor of NewsBusters and director of media analysis at the Media Research Center.

"They feel that in most foreign conflicts, they are trained as journalists to always suspect that the United States is doing something immoral,'' Graham said Monday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

"In this conflict, Israel is seen as the United States, so Israel must be doing something wrong, especially when the prime minister's not shaking hands with whoever the Palestinian leader of the moment is.

"In this particular case, Israel is the stand-in for the United States. Therefore, Israel is the aggressor and somehow the Palestinians are the victims.''

Seriously? Journalists are trained to distrust the United States? What planet is Graham from?

Graham claims to have had some journalism training in college (well, a mass communications minor), and we're pretty sure that nobody at Bemidji State University ever attempted to train him to "distrust the United States." Meanwhile, I have both bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism, and say unequivocally that learning to distrust the United States was not part of my training.

It seems that Graham's "media analysis" has nothing to do with how journalists actually work and everything to do with perpetuating a right-wing caricature of it. It may be divorced from reality, but hey, it apparently keeps the donations rolling in to the MRC.

WND Columnist Botches Facts On U.S. Humanitarian Aid To Gaza
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Ben Kinchlow gets a couple things wrong about the U.S. role in the Israel-Hamas conflict in his July 28 WorldNetDaily column. First, he writes: "Please correct me if I am wrong, but I do not recall Secretary of State John Kerry flying in to meet with the Palestinian leadership to stop their firing rockets into Israeli towns and villages."

But "the Palestinian leadership" is not firing rockets into Israel; Hamas is. Because Hamas is considered a terrorist organization, the U.S. does not negotiate directly with them.

Keep in mind, Israel and America are allies, yet the Obama administration announced a week ago that it is sending $47 million in humanitarian aid to the Palestinian government.

“Humanitarian aid” to a government that calls on its own citizens to refuse to leave buildings Israel has warned will be targeted? If these government officials are willing to have their people killed by pre-announced Israeli airstrikes and artillery barrages, how much humanitarian concern does it have?

First, Kinchlow is again falsely conflating Hamas with all Palestinians. Second, that aid is not being given to the Palestinian government -- it's going to USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

Still, Kinchlow clings to his misinformation:

I have a question for the current administration. You just approved an additional $47 million in humanitarian aid to a government that openly calls for the destruction of its neighbor, continually allows rockets to be fired at civilians and promotes the death of its own citizens as martyrs and human shields.

“What up wid dat, Homies?”

The better question is what up wid a columnist who fails to get his facts straight before he opines.

Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Supersize WorldNetDaily Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily

I was astonished and angered to read last week that the American Civil Liberties Union gathered “a coalition of 45 civil rights, human rights, privacy rights and faith-based organizations (and) sent a letter to President Obama asking for ‘a full public accounting of … practices’” related to the NSA’s spying on five leading American Muslims.

Sure, it’s a legitimate complaint, so why am I angry? Because instead of requesting this “full public accounting,” the ACLU should be organizing with other presumed guardians of our individual constitutional liberties to demand that impeachment proceedings begin against Obama, the most flagrant presidential violator of the Constitution in our history.

This is for the sake of our very identity as Americans.

-- Nat Hentoff, July 15 WorldNetDaily column

So, what are the real sympathies of the Obama administration and Democratic power players toward their beleaguered black urban constituents? I would imagine it is something in the area of utter contempt. Think about it: Progressive-socialist Democratic politicians have been exploiting blacks for decades; certainly, having managed to bring them from a place of cultural viability to abject thralldom – with their willing participation, I might add – can’t have improved these elites’ opinions of blacks at large. As far as Obama and his cabal are concerned, well, blacks are just useful idiots in the true Leninist sense.

My question is what these suffering inner-city blacks across America would think – and do – if they knew that their suffering was by design. I suppose that ultimately using blacks’ outrage to foment violent urban uprisings may indeed be part of the plan, but this remains to be seen.

-- Erik Rush, July 16 WND column

It wasn’t that long ago that a prospective Supreme Court justice was blackballed because he had occasionally smoked marijuana while in college. Although it seems as if it happened a hundred years ago, it wasn’t that long until we elected Bill Clinton, who admitted he had smoked pot, but lied about never having inhaled. That’s like saying you ate a T-bone steak, but didn’t swallow.

We then elected Barack Obama who not only smoked weed on a regular basis, but bragged about it in his autobiography. All along, I had thought that all of his obvious problems were the result of his having been abandoned as a child by his mother, father and stepfather, and left to be raised by communist grandparents and a sexual pervert, Frank Marshall Davis, who served as a mentor to young Barack.

However, now that medical research has linked marijuana not only to a diminished mental capacity, but to schizophrenia, I have had to revise my diagnosis. It’s just possible that marijuana played an equally large role in the stoner’s turning out to be such a lousy excuse for a president.

-- Burt Prelutsky, July 17 WND column

You have to be extraordinarily ignorant or gullible to believe that the chaos on the southwest border is an accident of history or the unexpected byproduct of a well-meaning act of Congress back in 2008. Just the opposite is true.

The current “surge” in border crossings by families and unaccompanied children is about as unexpected and unplanned as the expansion of Medicaid enrollments under Obamacare. Both are the logical and predictable results of Obama policies.

-- Tom Tancredo, July 18 WND column

The question has been asked many times over the last five years: What is Barack Obama doing?

Why is he inviting massive numbers of illegal aliens, including children, to risk their lives to swarm our southern border?

Why has he created a national health-care system that is unsustainable economically in the long term and is creating crisis in the short term?

Why is he turning down the opportunity to buy oil from our neighbor to the north and forcing Canada to sell it to China instead?

In short, why is he doing so much of what he is doing that seems not to make a lot of sense to the American people?

The shocking answer is that they do make sense in a perverted, un-American paradigm – one I have tried to bring to the attention of the American people for many years. The purpose is to increase misery and manufacture crises.

-- Joseph Farah, July 22 WND column

Had Obama not sought election to the presidency, his ideas could rightly be characterized as un-American. In fact, they were by many opponents in 2008 and 2012.

There were many presidents in American history who exceeded their constitutional authority.

There were many presidents in American history who hurt the country through their actions.

There were many presidents in American history who caused pain and sorrow for their constituents.

But has there ever before been an American president who intentionally took office to subvert and undermine the Constitution for the express purpose of imposing his own will on the people without a thought or care to constitutional limits?

That would be Barack Obama.

The Anti-President.

-- Joseph Farah, July 23 WND column

President Barack Hussein Obama is literally destroying the world. If you thought that Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were bad, there is no comparison to this socialist/communist, racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-white commander in chief whom I frequently refer to sarcastically, but realistically, as the “Mullah in Chief.”

-- Larry Klayman, July 25 WND column

Remember, Obama is not a leader in the traditional sense. He’s not a president in any sense – at least as we have known that office in the past. He’s a community organizer who counts on demonizing his opponents, playing the victim, blaming, as he did last week, “the unjust status quo,” as if he is an outside in Washington rather than the occupant of the White House for the last five and a half years.

I’ve never thought Obama’s decisions were haphazard, unplanned, unscripted and without purpose – just irresponsible, reckless, un-American, extra-constitutional and evil.

And that’s why I raise the question.

More and more critical observers are suggesting Obama wants Republicans to move toward impeachment. It is as if he is daring them to do so. Maybe he recognizes the party’s timid national leadership is reticent to take him on in any meaningful way. Maybe he hopes the midterm election damage will be less severe if the Republican base throws up its hands in frustration over having no meaningful alternative. Maybe he just wants to introduce more confusion and chaos into American politics. Maybe the border crisis is yet another attempt to play the race card that has been his trump card since he ran for president.

Whatever it is, America is paying a big price right now for electing and re-electing this fraud, this impostor, this demagogue.

-- Joseph Farah, July 28 WND column

Depiction-Equals-Approval Fallacy Watch
Topic: Media Research Center

You'd think that after 25 years of attacking the media, the Media Research Center would have developed a clue about how news works. Apparently not.

A July 30 MRC item by Kyle Drennen carries the headline "NBC Touts Palestinian Teen Praising 'Justified' Hamas Terror Attacks on Israe." Drennen complains that NBC "highlighted a Palestinian teenager celebrating the terror group's attacks: 'In Gaza, many see these attacks as justified. 16-year-old Farah Bakkar has developed a following online after live tweeting as [Israeli] bombs fell....Farah never supported Hamas before, but does now.' A sound bite ran of Bakkar proclaiming: 'When I see the [Hamas] rockets getting to Israel, I start loving them more and more and I pray for them.'" Drennen presents this as NBC endorsing the teen's remarks.

This is the Depiction-Equals-Approval Fallacy run amok. It's simply absurd to claim, as Drennen is trying to do, that the inclusion of a point of view in a news report means the news outlet agrees with that viewpoint.

After all these years, this is what passes for "media research" at the MRC.

No, WND, Sandra Fluke Never Claimed She Was Too Poor To Afford Birth Control
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily reporter Chelsea Schilling has a long, long history of getting facts wrong. She starts off her July 29 article with yet another whopper:

Sandra Fluke – the feminist attorney who in 2012 claimed she couldn’t afford the $9 monthly cost of birth control pills and has said taxpayers should pay for it – is loaning her own legislative campaign a hefty sum of $100,000.

In fact, during the 2012 congressional testimony that prompted WND friend Rush Limbaugh to misogynistically label her a slut and a prostitute (which Schilling soft-pedals as Limbaugh merely suggesting it), Fluke did not discuss her own personal circumstances.

Schilling also furthers the misnomer that all birth control costs $9 a month. As the New Republic points out, not every birth control method works for every woman due to side effects, and that includes cheap generic birth control:

For some women, finding the right contraceptive is a matter of finding the right pill. For others, it’s a matter of finding a whole other birth control method – like implants, inter-uterine devices, or surgical sterilization. Most of these alternatives cost more than $9 a month and some of them cost a lot more than $9 a month.

Such ignorance of basic facts in order to forward a political agenda is just another reason why nobody believes WND.

Tim Graham Transgender Freakout Watch
Topic: NewsBusters

The Media Research Center's Tim Graham has been on quite the roll lately when it comes to freaking out about transgenders. He's in freakout mode once again in a July 27 NewsBusters post railing at the New York Times for treating transgenders as if they had basic human rights:

In the same Friday New York Times in which “conservative firebrand” Dinesh D’Souza was dissected and a “conservative script” was honed to “light fire on abortion,” the social leftists pushing transgender issues were never identified as liberal or leftist. This time, the venue for gender delusion was a Quaker college in Oregon.

Forget the science. The dictatorship of relativism is bearing down.  A person's gender is utterly dependent on what they feel like being. A caption on Friday explained: “Jaycen, a George Fox University student who identifies as male, wants to live next year with a group of male friends; however, the college considers him a woman and turned down his request.”

[...]

Now what if someone took this same argument and made it about race? As in: I was "assigned whiteness" at birth, but I feel like I should be black based on my "lived experience" pretending to be what I am not? Jaycen is supposedly more male because she's into "the video game Call to Duty and listening to R&B and hip hop." Could it be discriminatory not to allow people who "identify as black" into black colleges or affirmative action programs, as the "identify as women" advocates push their way into women's colleges?

[...]

There's not one sliver of space in this politically correct story for the idea that the "LGBTQ" agenda is completely at odds with Christianity and other major global religions, and that to force this sinful agenda on religious institutions is a breach of religious liberty, which seems to be one of the Obama administration's goals.

What does Obama have to do with this? Nothing that we can see, beyond Graham inadvertently exposing the Media Research Center's agenda to be less about "media research" and more about partisan politics, which the MRC's nonprofit tax status theoretically forbids.

NEW ARTICLE: There's No Place Like WND (For Discredited Filmmakers And Unethical Reporting)
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joel Gilbert knows the best way to get WorldNetDaily to promote his new anti-Obama film and ignore his track record of falsehoods: Put Jerome Corsi in the movie. Read more >>

CNS Promotes Levin Lawsuit, Doesn't Disclose MRC's Business Deal With Him
Topic: CNSNews.com

Susan Jones writes in a July 25 CNSNews.com article:

A conservative legal group is asking a federal judge to punish the Environmental Protection Agency for destroying or failing to preserve emails and text messages requested in August 2012 under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Landmark Legal Foundation believes the requested -- but never delivered -- messages to outside groups would have revealed EPA attempts to influence the 2012 presidential election.

"The EPA is a toxic waste dump for lawlessness and disdain for the Constitution,” said Landmark Legal President Mark Levin. 

CNS neglects to mention that CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, has a business relationship with Levin, in which the MRC pays Levin on his radio show and uses Levin's endorsement on its own websites.

Though CNS presents itself as a news operation presumably subject to journalistic codes of ethics, it regularly publishes stories about Levin while failing to disclose that he's a paid spokesman.

WND Pretends 9-Year-Old Attack On Al Franken Is New
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily tries hard to push a scandal in a July 27 article:

While the re-election campaign of U.S. Sen. Joe Walsh, D-Mont., has been rocked by claims that he plagiarized 25 percent of his 2007 master’s thesis, another well-known Democrat senator is in the hot seat, facing plagiarism accusations from an author.

As a radio host on the left-leaning network Air America, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., regularly emphasized the importance of telling the truth.

“Telling the truth is something I take seriously, and I try to hold myself to an impossibly high standard,” he wrote in his book “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.”

But Alan Skorski, author of “Pants on Fire: How Al Franken Lies, Smears and Deceives,” contends Franken plagiarized a chapter, “The Chapter on Fox,” lifting the words from a leftist group called Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, or FAIR.

Skorski lists at least 18 examples of what he claims is Franken quoting almost word for word from the group’s reports on Fox News and conservatives.

There are two significant pieces of information missing from this unbylined article. First, WND published Skorski's book. Second, WND published it in 2005.

That's right -- WND is reporting 9-year-old allegations as new. Heck, Skorski himself stopped promoting his book in 2006. And WND certainly won't tell you that Skorski's main attacks against Franken have been discredited.

What we seem to have here is a desperate attempt to move some books moldering away in WND's seemingly vast warehouse. WND is currently selling the book for $19.96, which is about $19.95 more than you will pay for a nice used copy of it through Amazon.

Further, WND's sudden concern about plagiarism is laughable given WND's own lengthy history of stealing the work of others.

Before accusing Franken of "massive plagiarism," perhaps WND should clean up its own archives first.

NewsBusters Glosses Over Plagiarist's Conservative Ties
Topic: NewsBusters

NewsBusters had little to say about BuzzFeed's Benny Johnson being fired for plagiarism, using it only as the introduction to a "weekend open thread" in a July 26 post.

NewsBusters clipped a Huffington Post item noting that "Benny Johnson was previously with Glenn Beck's The Blaze, and has also written for Breitbart News," but it avoided further discussion of the unavoidable conclusion those ties mean: Johnson is a conservative.

Outlets like the Blaze and Breitbart are ideologically driven -- much more so than the mainstream media outlets NewsBusters' minders at the Media Research Center love to fearmonger about -- so it's unlikely that Johnson could have gotten jobs there without demonstrating a commitment to right-wing ideology. That says a lot about right-wing media ethics, but you won't hear NewsBusters talk about that.

NewsBusters also won't mention the fact that it previously promoted a Johnson post at BuzzFeed item later found to have contained plagiarized content. A February 2013 post by Randy Hall highlighted a Johnson item headlined “7 Things Democrats Would Have Freaked Out About if Bush Had Done Them”; that item now contains an editor's note that "This post has been corrected to remove phrasing that was copied from The Hill. BuzzFeed takes its responsibility to readers very seriously, and plagiarism is a major breach of that responsibility."

NewsBusters has long covered for the mistakes of conservative writers. When conservative Washington Post blogger Ben Domenech  was forced to resign after evidence of plagiarism surfaced, the MRC did what it could to change the subject. Tim Graham asserted that "What the Domenech fiasco should show is that left-wingers like those Media Mutterers are quite furious in attempting to keep the liberal media as liberal as they can muster," and Greg Sheffield claimed that the Post "cave[d] in to left-wing pressure" to fire Domenech while not mentioning his plagiarism.

(Interestingly, Domenech has rehabilitated himself, now running the the Federalist website, and NewsBusters likes to cite him.)